Category: Items

Statsticks in Path of Exile never were a common thing up to the release of 3.1. With 3.1 came the War for the Atlas, which brought a set of new Shaper and Elder mods with it. Statsticks have been brought to the forefront of the meta now with physical skills such as Blade Flurry and Ethereal Knives equipping them in the offhand to use. In this article, we will go through what statsticks do and why they are so powerful.

So what is a statstick? A statstick is a weapon equipped in the offhand that generally provides % damage boosts. This comes at the cost of regular weapon mods such as local damage and attack speed, or in a caster’s case, spell critical strike chance and so on. For this reason, statsticks are equipped in the offhand while a normal weapon is in the main hand. Additionally, dual-wielding grants 10% more attack speed, 15% additional block chance, and 20% more attack physical damage while dual wielding. These boosts themselves are quite incredible but its only added upon by the statstick.

The first statsticks were unique items, for there were no Elder or Shaper mods in that time. The first statstick was the Soul Taker. Back before its nerf, it had decent damage (enough to not be considered a statstick) but the real reason people used it was the unique modifier, Insufficient mana doesn’t prevent your melee attacks. This allowed people to completely reserve their mana and in the age of Reduced Mana, that was quite possible.Reduced Mana was like Enlighten but it leveled normally and level 20 gave an insane 66% mana multiplier.

The next big statstick was Death’s Hand. This weapon was used to gain Unholy Might in many reave builds and it was popularized by ZiggyD’s Southpaw Reaver. Unholy Might adds 30% chaos damage as physical damage which is a huge buff since most mobs do not have chaos resistances. Death’s Hand also grants power charge on stun which is free power charge generation on many builds.

Today, we are in a world of rare statsticks. With 3.1 we have earned a host of mods allowing us to gain extra fire, lightning, and chaos damage from shaped sceptres. It’s all pretty straight-forward. You buy it and it doubles your damage. Simple, right? However, there is a catch that makes it even more incredible than it already is. The additional chaos damage “double dips” so to speak, if you are converting all your physical damage to cold, then fire, then lightning, the 20% additional chaos damage mod in the picture above turns into a 60% because you will have converted three times! Added with the other modifiers, that is 140% Additional damage! There are many crazy builds out there and many will come out soon!

Personally, I am excited to see where GGG takes statsticks. Will the take them even farther or nerf them to ES? Either way, keep playing PoE and have fun!

FilterBlade is a new PoE web application released recently that allows you to easily create and customize your own filters in Path of Exile. It was brought to the community by Neversink, Haggis50, and Tobnac. This application is very useful for introducing beginners to the world to loot filters. Whats so special about FilterBlade is the simplicity of using the website. I will be providing a written and video tutorial below.

Written/Video Overview

From here, I’d suggest clicking on the website link and reading this while going along on your own. Alternatively, a video tutorial made by DeMiGodkingLoL will be posted at the end. By going to the FilterBlade website you will be presented with preset options on the main page. From here, it also gives you some basic information about the presets as well as some of the basic options that can be changed.

After picking your basic preset, you want to click on the “Customize” header. From here you will be able to change the look, text, color, outline, sound, and whatever else you can dream of for any group of items such as chromatic recipe items, leveling items, and crafting bases.

Next, you can click on the “Loot Simulator” header which allows you to test out your loot filter. If you don’t like something, don’t worry! There is a quick edit feature you can access directly from this page to clean up your filter.

After cleaning up your filter, you can click on the “Style Editor” header which allows you to make major color and sound changes for your entire filter. If you get bored of red you can switch to blue! Only use this for making major modifications.

The final header is the “Code” header. This is where you can copy the code of your finished filter and put it in your game files to have your very own, custom filter! Additionally, if you’re not quite done working on your filter, you can save it for next time with the header labeled “download”!

The Breach challenge leagues go live on December 2 when the new Path of Exile major patch hits. These challenge leagues will contain Breaches One of the items found inside these Breaches is the Blessing of Xoph. This item can upgrade some uniques found in the Breach.

Details

Now I will be going more into detail about the Blessing of Xoph. It is assumed that it will function the same as fated items did in the Prophecy leagues. In Prophecy, items had to be equipped for certain prophecies to be completed. Once completed, these Prophecies would upgrade the item permanently and change its name.

The Blessing of Xoph has been confirmed to drop from Breachlords. Most people agree that the Blessings of Xoph will only drop from Breachlords. However, these blessings will only be obtainable in the Breachlord’s Domain. They will not be obtainable in Breachlord encounters in normal Breaches. The general consensus of the public is that Breachlord Lairs will be the new endgame farm just like the Pale Council was in Prophecy league. If this is the case, then I would expect the Blessing of Xoph to be mildly powerful. TI would expect items “blessed” by it to have some value and be quite popular.

GGG has many options on how to change the Blessing of Xoph and its power. My only hope is that they will make it powerful enough, but hard to obtain. In a perfect world I would like the Breachlords to be almost as hard as the Shaper but expect GGG to make them about as difficult as the Pale Council or normal Atziri.

This is a quick write up on the unique item known as Cospri’s Malice. It is a very interesting item that can be used for a variety of builds.

Overview

Cospri’s Malice is a one handed sword that casts socketed cold spells on melee crit. The downsides this sword possesses are the high intelligence requirement and no physical damage. This means you want to be using this with a pure elemental skill. Cold skills in general are not very powerful so we will utilize the keywords Discharge is tagged with. Discharge is a very special spell because it deals damage based on the number and type of power, endurance, and frenzy charges you have. Even without any cold charges, Discharge is still tagged with ‘Cold Spell’ and therefore can be used with Cospri’s Malice even without any Cold Damage scaling on Discharge.

Benefits

The damage benefits Cospri’s Malice provide are many. It gives you an insane 1.75 attack speed, 30% critical strike multiplier, free EE, and increased critical strike chance against chilled enemies. This will always be up as it innately does cold damage with attacks. Additionally, you can socket two support gems with discharge. In a Voll’s Protector you would be wasting 3 or more slots running COC, Discharge, and support gems such as Life Leech, and Increased AOE. You can run Discharge and the support gems inside the Cospri’s malice. This allows you to run a Crit attack skill in a full 6 link.

Uniques and Build

Some uniques you want to use with this are Voll’s Devotion, Death’s Door, and Voll’s Protector. I would build it as a CI assassin and there is a very nice guide on the official forums that you can find here.

There are many defensive unique items you can use in your build. I will be listing a few of them below. These vary in price depending on the popularity of the builds they are mainly used in.

Bringer of Rain – This is one of the most iconic unique items in Path of Exile. When released, it gave you a 7 link, block, and 200+ life. It was then nerfed twice. It still remains one of the most power options for melee builds that utilize block. It’s only downside is that it doesn’t allow a chest to be worn.

Lightning Coil – Again, an iconic item of Path of Exile, this lets you take 30% of your physical damage as lightning damage (40% with legacy). Pair this with 75% lightning res or even more and you get a solid defensive chest to help mitigate physical damage. The only downside is – 60% lightning resistances but this can be made up for with other gear.

Rumi’s Concoction – This flask provides block and spell block as well as some armor. Many builds combine this with pathfinder, flask effect nodes, and a shield, to get maximum block. This means running one flask can give you 75% chance to not take damage per hit.

Taste of Hate – This is another great flask although it is quite expensive in new leagues. It provides a 20-30% more damage boost to your physical damage as well. This flask also allows you to take 20% (30% for legacy) of your physical damage as cold damage. This makes it a psuedo lightning coil that only takes up one flask spot. Paired with pathfinder and some flask effect nodes, it becomes godly.

Belly of the Beast – This chest gives 30%-40% increased maximum life. This is amazing when you have a lot of flat life on other gear to scale it. This chest also drops often and is quite cheap unlike some other options given in this article.

Kaom’s Heart – This is one of the most famous items in Path of Exile history. It’s legacy variant goes for more than any non-perfect unique has ever gone for. Even the nerfed version provides 500 life. This works well when you have a lot of life scaling in your tree. If you have 200%, easily achievable on a melee build, then Kaom’s Heart adds 1500 life.